The Uplift War u-3

by David Brin

  If he weren’t still little more than an invalid he would have overcome the objections of Micah and Dr. Soo and gone topside himself, looking for the long overdue raiding party. As it was, the two chim scientists had nearly had to use force to stop him.

  Traces of Robert’s fever still returned now and then. He wiped his forehead and suppressed some momentary shivers. No, he thought. I am in control!

  He stood up and picked his way carefully toward the sounds of muttered argument, where he found a pair of chims working over the pearly light of a salvaged level-seventeen computer. Robert sat on a packing crate behind them and listened for a while. When he made a suggestion they tried it, and it worked. Soon he had almost managed to push aside his worries as he immersed himself in work, helping the chims sketch out military tactics programming for a machine that had never been designed for anything more hostile than chess.

  Somebody came by with a pitcher of juice. He drank. Someone handed him a sandwich. He ate.

  An indeterminate time later a shout echoed through the underground chamber. Feet thumped hurriedly over low wooden bridges. Robert’s eyes had grown accustomed to the bright screen, so it was out of a dark gloom that he saw chims hurrying past, seizing assorted, odd-lot weapons as they rushedup the passage leading to the surface.

  He stood and grabbed at the nearest running brown form. “What’s happening?”

  He might as well have tried to halt a bull. The chim tore free without even glancing his way and vanished up the ragged tunnel. The next one he waved down actually looked at him and halted restlessly. “It’s th’ expedition,” the nervous chen explained. “They’ve come back. … At least I hear some of ’em have.”

  Robert let the fellow go. He began casting around the chamber for a weapon of his own. If the raiding party had been followed back here…

  There wasn’t anything handy, of course. He realized bitterly that a rifle would hardly do him any good with his right arm immobilized. The chims probably wouldn’t let him fight anyway. They’d more likely carry him bodily out of harm’s way, deeper into the caves.

  For a while there was silence. A few elderly chims waited with him for the sound of gunfire.

  Instead, there came voices, gradually growing louder. The shouts sounded more excited than fearful.

  Something seemed to stroke him, just above the ears. He hadn’t had much practice since the accident, but now Robert’s simple empathy sense felt a familiar trace blow into the chamber. He began to hope.

  A babbling crowd of figures turned the bend — ragged, filthy neo-chimpanzees carrying slung weapons, some sporting bandages. The instant he saw Athaclena, a knot seemed to let go inside of Robert.

  Just as quickly, though, another worry took its place. The Tymbrimi girl had been using the gheer transformation, clearly. He felt the rough edges of her exhaustion, and her face was gaunt.

  Moreover, Robert could tell that she was still hard at work. Her corona stood puffed out, sparkling without light. The chims hardly seemed to notice as stay-at-homes eagerly pumped the jubilant raiders for news. But Robert realized that Athaclena was concentrating hard to craft that mood. It was too tenuous, too tentative to sustain itself without her.

  “Robert!” Her eyes widened. “Should you be out of bed? Your fever only broke yesterday.”

  “I’m fine. But—”

  “Good. I am happy to see you ambulatory, at last.”

  Robert watched as two heavily bandaged forms were rushed past on stretchers toward their makeshift hospital. He sensed Athaclena’s effort to divert attention away from the bleeding, perhaps dying, soldiers until they were out of sight. Only the presence of the chims made Robert keep his voice low and even. “I want to talk with you, Athaclena.”

  She met his eyes, and for a brief instant Robert thought he kenned a faint form, turning and whirling above the floating tendrils of her corona. It was a harried glyph.

  The returning warriors were busy with food and drink, bragging to their eager peers. Only Benjamin, a hand-sewn lieutenant’s patch on his arm, stood soberly beside Athaclena. She nodded. “Very well, Robert. Let us go someplace private.”

  “Let me guess,” he said, levelly. “You got your asses kicked.”

  Chim Benjamin winced, but he did not disagree. He tapped a spot on an outstretched map.

  “We hit them here, in Yenching Gap,” he said. “It was our fourth raid, so we thought we knew what to expect.”

  “Your fourth.” Robert turned to Athaclena. “How long has this been going on?”

  She had been picking daintily at a pocket pastry filled with something pungently aromatic. She wrinkled her nose. “We have been practicing for about a week, Robert. But this was the first time we tried to do any real harm.”

  “And?”

  Benjamin seemed immune to Athaclena’s mood-tailoring. Perhaps it was intentional, for she would need at least one aide whose judgment was unaffected. Or maybe he was just too bright. He rolled his eyes. “We’re the ones who got hurt.” He went on to explain. “We split into five groups. Mizz Athaclena insisted. It’s what saved us.”

  “What was your target?”

  “A small patrol. Two light hover-tanks and a couple of open landcars.”

  Robert pondered the site on the map, where one of the few roads entered the first rank of mountains. From what others had told him, the enemy were seldom seen above the Sind. They seemed content to control space, the Archipelago, and the narrow strip of settlement along the coast around Port Helenia.

  “Good. I am happy to see you ambulatory, at last.”

  Robert watched as two heavily bandaged forms were rushed past on stretchers toward their makeshift hospital. He sensed Athaclena’s effort to divert attention away from the bleeding, perhaps dying, soldiers until they were out of sight. Only the presence of the chims made Robert keep his voice low and even. “I want to talk with you, Athaclena.”

  She met his eyes, and for a brief instant Robert thought he kenned a faint form, turning and whirling above the floating tendrils of her corona. It was a harried glyph.

  The returning warriors were busy with food and drink, bragging to their eager peers. Only Benjamin, a hand-sewn lieutenant’s patch on his arm, stood soberly beside Athaclena. She nodded. “Very well, Robert. Let us go someplace private.”

  “Let me guess,” he said, levelly. “You got your asses kicked.”

  Chim Benjamin winced, but he did not disagree. He tapped a spot on an outstretched map.

  “We hit them here, in Yenching Gap,” he said. “It was our fourth raid, so we thought we knew what to expect.”

  “Your fourth.” Robert turned to Athaclena. “How long has this been going on?”

  She had been picking daintily at a pocket pastry filled with something pungently aromatic. She wrinkled her nose. “We have been practicing for about a week, Robert. But this was the first time we tried to do any real harm.”

  “And?”

  Benjamin seemed immune to Athaclena’s mood-tailoring. Perhaps it was intentional, for she would need at least one aide whose judgment was unaffected. Or maybe he was just too bright. He rolled his eyes. “We’re the ones who got hurt.” He went on to explain. “We split into five groups. Mizz Athaclena insisted. It’s what saved us.”

  “What was your target?”

  “A small patrol. Two light hover-tanks and a couple of open landcars.”

  Robert pondered the site on the map, where one of the few roads entered the first rank of mountains. From what others had told him, the enemy were seldom seen above the Sind. They seemed content to control space, the Archipelago, and the narrow strip of settlement along the coast around Port Helenia Tymbrimi shrug. “I did not think we should approach too closely, on our first encounter.”

  Robert nodded. Indeed, if closer, “better” ambush sites had been chosen, few if any of the chims would have made it back alive.

  The plan was good.

  No, not good. Inspired. It hadn’t been intended to hurt
the enemy but to build confidence. The troops had been dispersed so everyone would get to fire at the patrol with minimum risk. The raiders could return home swaggering, but most important, they would make it home.

  Even so, they had been hurt. Robert could sense how exhausted Athaclena was, partly from the effort of maintaining everyone’s mood of “victory.”

  He felt a touch on his knee and took Athaclena’s hand in his own. Her long, delicate fingers closed tightly, and he felt her triple-beat pulse.

  Their eyes met.

  “We turned a possible disaster into a minor success today,” Benjamin said. “But so long as the enemy always knows where we are, I don’t see how we can ever do more than play tag with them. And even that game’ll certainly cost more than we can afford to pay.”

  30

  Fiben

  Fiben rubbed the back of his neck and stared irritably across the table. So this was the person he had been sent to contact, Dr. Taka’s brilliant student, their would-be leader of an urban underground.

  “What kind of idiocy was that?” he accused. “You let me walk into that club blind, ignorant. There were a dozen times I nearly got caught last night. Or even killed!”

  “It was two nights ago,” Gailet Jones corrected him. She sat in a straight-backed chair and smoothed the blue demisilk of her sarong. “Anyway, I was there, at the Ape’s Grape, waiting outside to make contact. I saw that you were a stranger, arriving alone, wearing a plaid work shirt, so I approached you with the password.”

  “Pink?” Fiben blinked at her. “You come up to me and whisper pink at me, and that’s supposed to be a bloody, reverted password?”

  Normally he would never use such rough language with a young lady. Right now Gailet Jones looked more like the sort of person he had expected in the first place, a chimmie of obvious education and breeding. But he had seen her under other circumstances, and he wasn’t ever likely to forget.

  “You call that a password? They told me to look for a fisherman]”

  Shouting made him wince. Fiben’s head still felt as though it were leaking brains in five or six places. His muscles had stopped cramping capriciously some time ago, but he still ached all over and his temper was short.

  “A fisherman? In that part of town?” Gailet Jones frowned, her face clouding momentarily. “Listen, everything was chaos when I rang up the Center to leave word with Dr. Taka. I figured her group was used to keeping secrets and would make an ideal core out in the countryside. I only had a few moments to think up a way to make a later contact before the Gubru took over the telephone lines. I figured they were already tapping and recording everything, so it had to be something colloquial, you know, that their language computers would have trouble interpreting.”

  She stopped suddenly, bringing her hand to her mouth. “Oh no!”

  “What?” Fiben edged forward.

  She blinked for a moment, then motioned in the air. “I told that fool operator at the Center how their emissary should dress, and where to meet me, then I said I’d pass myself off as a hooker—”

  “As a what? I don’t get it.” Fiben shook his head.

  “It’s an archaic term. Pre-Contact human slang for one who offers cheap, illicit sex for cash.”

  Fiben snapped. “Of all the damn fool, Ifni-cursed, loony ideas!”

  Gailet Jones answered back hotly. “All right, smartie, what should I have done? The militia was falling to pieces. Nobody had even considered what to do if every human on the planet was suddenly removed from the chain of command! I had this wild notion of helping to start a resistance movement from scratch. So I tried to arrange a meeting—”

  “Uh huh, posing as someone advertising illicit favors, right outside a place where the Gubru were inciting a sexual frenzy.”

  “How was 7 to know what they were going to do, or that they’d choose that sleepy little club as the place to do it in? I conjectured that social restraints would relax enough to let me pull the pose and so be able to approach strangers. It never occurred to me they’d relax that much! My guess was that anyone I came up to by mistake would be so surprised he’d act as you did and I could pull a fade.”

  “But it didn’t work out that way.”

  “No it did not! Before you appeared, several solitary chens showed up dressed likely enough to make me put on my act. Poor Max had to stun half a dozen of them, and the alley was starting to get full! But it was already too late to change the rendezvous, or the password—”

  “Which nobody understood! Hooker? You should have realized something like that would get garbled!”

  “I knew Dr. Taka would understand. We used to watch and discuss old movies together. We’d study the archaic words they used. I can’t understand why she …” Her voice trailed off when she saw the expression on Fiben’s face. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I’m sorry. I just realized that you couldn’t know.” He shook his head. “You see, Dr. Taka died just about the time they got your message, of an allergic reaction to the coercion gas.”

  Her breath caught. Gailet seemed to sink into herself. “I … I feared as much when she didn’t show up in town for internment. It’s … a great loss.” She closed her eyes and turned away, obviously feeling more than her words told.

  At least she had been spared witnessing the flaming end of the Howletts Center as the soot-covered ambulances came and went, and the glazed, dying face of her mentor as the ecdemic gas took its cruel, statistical toll. Fiben had seen recordings of that fear-palled evening. The images lay in dark layers still, at the back of his mind.

  Gailet gathered herself, visibly putting off her mourning for later. She dabbed her eyes and faced Fiben, jaw outthrust defiantly. “I had to come up with something a chim would understand but the Eatees’ language computers wouldn’t. It won’t be the last time we have to improvise. Anyway, what matters is that you are here. Our two groups are in contact now.”

  “I was almost killed,” he pointed out, though this time he felt a bit churlish for mentioning it.

  “But you weren’t killed. In fact, there may be ways to turn your little misadventure into an advantage. Out on the streets they’re still talking about what you did that night, you know.”

  Was that a faint, tentative note of respect in her voice? A peace offering, perhaps?

  Suddenly, it was all too much. Much too much for him. Fiben knew it was exactly the wrong thing to do, at exactly the wrong time, but he just couldn’t help himself. He broke up—

  “A hook… ?” He giggled, though every shake seemed to rattle his brain in his skull. “A hooker?” He threw back his head and hooted, pounding on the arms of the chair. Fiben slumped. He guffawed, kicking his feet in the air. “Oh, Goodall. That was all I needed to be looking for!”

  Gailet Jones glared at him as he gasped for breath. He didn’t even care, right now, if she called in that big chim, Max, to use the stunner on him again.

  It was all just too much.

  If the look in her eyes right then counted for anything, Fiben knew this alliance was already off to a rocky start.

  31

  Galactics

  The Suzerain of Beam and Talon stepped aboard its personal barge and accepted the salutes of its Talon Soldier escort. They were carefully chosen troops, feathers perfectly preened, crests neatly dyed with colors noting rank and unit. The admiral’s Kwackoo aide hurried forth and took its ceremonial robe. When all had settled onto their perches the pilot took off on gravities, heading toward the defense works under construction in the low hills east of Port Helenia. The Suzerain of Beam and Talon watched in silence as the new city fence fell behind them and the farms of this small Earthling settlement rushed by underneath.

  The seniormost stoop-colonel, military second in command, saluted with a sharp beak-clap. “The conclave went well? Suitably? Satisfactorily?” the stoop-colonel asked.

  The Suzerain of Beam and Talon chose to overlook the impudence of the question. It was more useful to hav
e a second who could think than one whose plumage was always perfectly preened. Surrounding itself with a few such creatures was one of the things that had won the Suzerain its candidacy. The admiral gave its inferior a haughty eyeblink of assent. “Our consensus is presently adequate, sufficient, it will do.”

  The stoop-colonel bowed and returned to its station. Of course it would know that consensus was never perfect at this early stage in a Molt. Anyone could tell that from the Suzerain’s ruffled down and haggard eyes.

  This most recent Command Conclave had been particularly indecisive, and several aspects had irritated the admiral deeply.

  For one thing, the Suzerain of Cost and Caution was pressing to release much of their support fleet to go assist other Gubru operations, far from here. And as if that weren’t enough, the third leader, the Suzerain of Propriety, still insisted on being carried everywhere on its perch, refusing to set foot on the soil of Garth until all punctilio had been satisfied. The priest was all fluffed and agitated over a number of issues — excessive human deaths from coercion gas, the threatened breakdown of the Garth Reclamation Project, the pitiful size of the Planetary Branch Library, the Uplift status of the benighted, pre-sentient neo-chimpanzees.

  On every issue, it seemed, there must be still another realignment, another tense negotiation. Another struggle for consensus.

  And yet, there were deeper issues than these ephemera. The Three had also begun to argue over fundamentals, and there the process was actually starting to become enjoyable, somehow. The pleasurable aspects of Triumviracy were emerging, especially when they danced and crooned and argued over deeper matters.

  Until now it had seemed that the flight to queenhood would be straight and easy for the admiral, for it had been in command from the start. Now it had begun to dawn on the Suzerain of Beam and Talon that all would not be easy. This was not going to be any trivial Molt after all.

  Of course the best ones never were. Very diverse factions had been involved in choosing the three leaders of the Expeditionary Force, for the Roost Masters of home had hopes for a new unified policy to emerge from this particular Threesome. In order for that to happen, all of them had to be very good minds, and very different from each other.